Apple to manufacture computers in U.S.

For the first time in years, Apple will manufacture computers in the United States, the chief executive of Apple, Timothy D. Cook, said in interviews with NBC and Bloomberg Businessweek.

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By VICTORIA SHANNON

capecodtimes.com

By VICTORIA SHANNON

Posted Dec. 7, 2012 at 2:00 AM
Updated Dec 7, 2012 at 7:15 AM

By VICTORIA SHANNON

Posted Dec. 7, 2012 at 2:00 AM
Updated Dec 7, 2012 at 7:15 AM

» Social News

For the first time in years, Apple will manufacture computers in the United States, the chief executive of Apple, Timothy D. Cook, said in interviews with NBC and Bloomberg Businessweek.

"Next year, we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States," he said in an interview to be broadcast Thursday on "Rock Center with Brian Williams" on NBC.

Apple, the biggest company in the world by market value, moved its manufacturing to Asia in the late 1990s. As an icon of U.S. technology success and innovation, the California-based company has been criticized in recent years for outsourcing jobs abroad.

"I don't think we have a responsibility to create a certain kind of job," Cook said in the Businessweek interview. "But I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs."

The company plans to spend $100 million on the U.S. manufacturing in 2013, according to the interviews, a small fraction of its overall factory investments and an even tinier portion of its available cash.

In the interviews, Cook said the company would work with partners and that the manufacturing would be more than just the final assembly of parts. He noted that parts of the company's ubiquitous iPhone, including the "engine" and the glass screen, were already made in America.

Over the last few years, sales of the iPhone, iPod and iPad have overwhelmed Apple's line of Macinotsh computers, the basis of the company's early business. Revenue from the iPhone alone made up 48 percent of the company's total revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 30.

But as recently as October, Apple introduced a new, thinner iMac, the product that pioneered the technique of building the computer innards in the flat screen.

Cook did not say in the interviews where in the United States the new manufacturing would occur. But he did defend Apple's track record in U.S. hiring.

"When you back up and look at Apple's effect on job creation in the United States, we estimate that we've created more than 600,000 jobs now," Cook told Businessweek. Those jobs include positions at partners and suppliers.

An Apple spokesman could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Foxconn Technology, which manufactures more than 40 percent of the world's electronics, is one of Apple's main overseas manufacturing contractors. Based in Taiwan, Foxconn is China's largest private employer, with 1.2 million workers, and it has come under intense scrutiny over working conditions inside its factories.

In March, Foxconn pledged to sharply curtail the number of working hours and significantly increase wages.

The announcement was a response to a far-ranging inspection by the Fair Labor Association, a monitoring group that found widespread problems — including numerous instances where Foxconn violated Chinese law and industry codes of conduct.

Apple, which recently joined the labor association, had asked the group to investigate plants manufacturing iPhones, iPads and other devices. A growing outcry over conditions at overseas factories prompted protests and petitions, and several labor rights organizations started scrutinizing Apple's suppliers.